Microsoft Live Labs: Deepfish

I was hanging out with a friend last night and he had a new mobile browser on his phone called Skyfire. It looked very similar to the functionality of the iPhone browser in allowing you to select an area on the page and then zoom into it as needed. That was in beta and I applied to get access but who knows how long that will take.

Then my friend told me about Deepfish from Microsoft. Why haven’t I heard of this? I obviously need to reduce my sleep further and expand my general searching for Microsoft news.

First let’s go ahead and jump to the naming of the application. Personally naming something related to a browser anything similar to “fish” sounds too much like “phish” as in “phishing scams”. Plus, to then include it as “Deepfish“, implies to me some covert intelligence spying plan. Again, relating this terms with an Internet browser just doesn’t seem smart.

With all that aside, here’s what I should be able to look forward to with the new browser functionality that should be coming from Microsoft Live Labs.

Deepfish provides:

• A familiar look and feel of web pages on mobile as seen on desktop.
• Bandwidth optimized rendering for faster content delivery.
• Address bar web navigation.
• Intuitive zooming, panning and cue map for quick navigation and browsing.
• Support for simple link navigation and form submission.

What else do you think should be included in a mobile browser? Should we expect mobile browsers to have all the add-on/extension functionality of their standard siblings?

To get more of an idea of how things can work you can review the Deepfish FAQ’s, which highlights some basic user questions that give you an idea of what’s possible, or at least should be possible.

Microsoft Live Labs Deepfish is still in limited release as well. We’ll see who contacts me first so I can download and play with something for real.